


What Coach Bittle knows

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coach doesn't share feelings well, Coach really loves Bitty, Coach's POV, Coming out sort of, F/M, M/M, rated for language, supportive coach eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6588277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coach Bittle is no bigot, but maybe he should have done a better job making sure his son knew that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Coach Bittle knows

**Author's Note:**

> I love the idea of Coach not being a homophobic ogre. Bitty might not be aware of Coach's feelings because he just doesn't talk about them. Not beta'd, so please let me know about any mistakes!

Richard Bittle wasn’t a bigot or a bully. 

He’d never pick on someone smaller than he was, or make fun of the boys who were sissies or the girls who buried their noses in books.

Playing football, he had a lot of black teammates over the years, and he counted many of them as friends.

He was chivalrous. His mama had taught him how to treat a lady, and he tried to live up to those standards. Being a man in his household meant being a gentleman.

Sure, the talk in the locker room was sometimes vulgar. Richard Bittle avoided joining in as he went from high school to college and the “fags” and “jagoffs” and “pussies” became … well, words he didn’t even like to think to himself.

Richard spent his time off the field in college studying for his degree in physical education. He would need it. He might have been the best player in high school, and good enough for a football scholarship to UGA, but he didn’t have the size to play in the NFL and he knew it. If he was going to work in football, it would be as a coach, teaching football and forming boys into fine young men along the way. 

He met Suzanne and took her out for the first time when he was a sophomore. She was tiny and smart and kind and what his mother called a real firecracker. They were engaged by the time they were seniors, and married seven months after graduation, just after his first season as an assistant high school football coach ended.

Four years later, when Eric came along, Coach Bittle was preparing to take over as head coach. He couldn’t have been more pleased when he found out he was going to have a son, a boy who could follow in his footsteps.

When Eric turned 7, Coach Bittle thought it was high time that Junior started to play football. The boy was small for his age, no doubt about it, but he dogged his father’s steps on the football field just like he followed his mother in the kitchen. Coach’s high school players liked it when Junior was around, tossing him balls and ruffling his hair.

Junior might not be big, but he was athletic. His energy was endless, his hand-eye coordination was impressive and he moved with a grace that Coach would normally have associated with dancers. He would make a decent running back, maybe even a better receiver. Coach couldn’t wait to untie his son from Suzanne’s apron strings and get him out of the kitchen and onto the football field. Heck, he’d even coach the Mighty Mites to make sure Junior got a good start.

Junior didn’t get a good start. He might have been speedy and strong for his size, but he was too sensitive, too sweet-natured. When the other little boys bragged about their tackling prowess, Junior talked about the peach pie he’d made that afternoon with his mama. When they ran sprints, and Junior ran faster than everyone else, he told them they’d done well too. When they told Junior he threw like a girl (he didn’t, Coach knew, but that didn’t help), he looked down to hide his face.

That was just the first practice.

By the second practice, Coach heard one of the other kids ask Junior if he was sure he wasn’t a girl. By the third, he heard a father yell at his son from the sideline, “Don’t let that mama’s boy beat you!”

Suzanne had raised her eyebrows when Junior went right to his room after the first practice.

“Worn out, I think,” Coach had said.

She was in the kitchen making snickerdoodles after the second practice; Junior walked past her on his way to his room.

“He’ll get used to the other boys,” Coach said. “They’re just a little more rough-and-tumble than he is.”

Suzanne’s lips pursed and her brows lowered. “Why does he have to get used to it?” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with Dicky.”

After the third practice, she stopped Junior with a piece of pie and some milk and asked how he liked football. He just looked at his plate until Suzanne put on her serious voice and said, “When I ask you a question, Dicky, I expect an answer.”

Then he looked up, eyes shiny with unshed tears, and said, “I don’t like it, Mama. They don’t like me, and I try to be nice, but it doesn’t help. It’s not like when I go with Coach to the high school. When they tackle me, it hurts.”

“Do you want to stop, Dicky?” Suzanne asked. “Maybe we could find some other sport for you, if football isn’t the right one.”

“No, ma’am,” Dicky said. “I want to grow up and play football for Coach. I’ll try harder.”

It was the fourth practice where everything went to pieces.

The team was practicing running an actual play, and Junior took the hand-off and started up the field when he was tackled hard to the ground. Coach let him take his time getting up, and tried the same play again. This time, Junior made it about 10 yards before a defender caught up with him and tackled him. A second defender jumped on him as he was falling, and a third came from across the field to pile on. Coach blew the whistle, and the three boys got up, laughing and high-fiving.

Junior stayed curled on the ground, tears on his face, and Suzanne, who had been watching from the parking lot because she wanted to see for herself, marched across the field.

The last boy to jump on Junior saw he wasn’t getting up and started taunting him. 

“Come on, crybaby!”

Coach blew his whistle again. “You! Sideline. Sit. You don’t laugh at a hurt player.”

By the time he turned back to his son, Suzanne was there, helping Junior to his feet. “Richard Bittle, he is done with football.”

Well, that’s not gonna help Junior with the other boys, Coach thought.

Suzanne took Junior home while Coach finished practice. When he came home, Suzanne was waiting in the kitchen.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Coach said. “They already think he’s a mama’s boy.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Suzanne asked. “What’s wrong with helping a little boy who’s hurting?”

“Nothing, when you put it like that,” Coach said. “But I’ve been around boys my whole life, and this won’t do him any favors. If they think he’s weak, they’ll go after him. He has to toughen up.”

“Richard Eric Bittle, Dicky is sweet and kind and generous and and I hope he stays that way,” Suzanne said. “If that’s what being tough means, I don’t want it for Dicky.”

That winter, Suzanne signed Junior up for skating lessons, and by the next winter, he was entering competitions, and winning some of them. Coach didn’t really understand it, what the judges were looking for with the beginners. It wasn’t flashy like the skating he saw in the Olympics. But it was good for Junior, he thought, to be good at something that got him out of the house.

By the time Junior was 14, he was probably the best junior figure skater in the state of Georgia, and on a good day, the best in the southeast region. His routines now looked to Coach like the ones Suzanne and Junior liked to watch on TV. So did his costumes, bedecked with sequins and spangles. When he skated, his smile would light up the whole building.

Coach was glad Junior had that, because he knew life in school wasn’t easy for his son. The other boys -- the ones who played football and basketball and baseball -- made fun of his size and his skating, even though none of them had ever seen Junior compete. His baked goods were coveted by the PTA for bake sales, but no matter how much the other kids enjoyed eating what he baked, they could not forgive him for being the one who made it. For being himself.

Coach went to as many skating competitions as he could, but the big ones fell during football season. When he did go, he felt out of place among the figure skating parents and fans. Maybe figure skating was a sport -- it certainly took strength and skill -- but instead of athletes working together as a team to achieve a shared goal, the skaters had teams of people working to support them. The cost of figure skating at Junior’s level was astronomical, but it wasn’t like the Bittles spent much money on anything else.

Junior was good at it, and it made him happy. Even if meant that Junior and Suzanne were away for lots of weekends, and spent hours each week traveling to and from practices, even if Coach rarely got a chance to sit down with Junior for dinner more than a time or two each week, that was good enough.

It was good enough until it wasn’t. 

Junior had just started high school and was working to balance new academic demands and a more complex social environment with a competitive figure skating career. Coach hadn’t seen much of him -- the beginning of the school year for football coaches was like tax season for accountants -- but he assumed that if there was a problem, someone would have told him.

He arrived home from work on a Friday night, late, ready to eat and then spend more time watching tape of the next day’s opponent. Suzanne looked puzzled when he came in.

“Where’s Dicky?” she asked.

“What do you mean? Isn’t he here?” Coach asked. 

“No, he had to stay after school to take that algebra test he missed last week when we were in Savannah,” Suzanne said. “He was going to meet up with you after. I told you this morning. Didn’t you remember?”

No, Coach didn’t remember. Still, Junior should have been done with his test well before Coach left, and he knew to wait in his father’s office if he wanted a ride home. “Maybe he caught the late bus? Have you checked his room?”

They looked in Junior’s room, and Suzanne called his figure skating friends, on the off chance that something had come up that she didn’t know about. That was a long shot, though, because none of them lived close enough for Junior to get to their homes on his own. Plus, nearly all of them were girls, and he couldn’t expect to sleep over at their houses.

His skating coach, Katya, said she hadn’t heard from Junior either, but asked his parents to call back and let her know when they found him. She was worried ; he’d been quieter than usual lately.

A phone call to the teacher Junior had met with after school told Coach that Junior had been there and taken his test, then mentioned he was heading for his dad’s office. He apparently never got there.

Coach and Suzanne drove back to the school, and started looking. It was near midnight when they found Junior, curled into a ball on the concrete floor of an athletic storage room, tears spent but his face still swollen with crying.

“I’m sorry,” Junior told his father. “I tried to fight back, but there were two of them.”

The boys weren’t on coach’s team. They were freshmen like Junior, playing on the junior varsity team. One had gone to elementary school and middle school with junior -- he was one of the three who had pounded Junior into the ground at his last football practice. After that, Coach thought, they’d reached a level of mutual toleration.

As Junior talked, more to Suzanne than Coach, Coach realized that Junior had been quiet about the taunting and low-level bullying that never stopped, and that it had only gotten worse in high school. The kids said he was a weakling, a crybaby, a wimp and a wuss. How could he, with the advantage of having a football coach for a father, not even be tough enough to try out for the team? 

Coach was in the principal’s office Monday morning, wanting to know what he planned to do. What the principal planned to do was nothing, really. 

Sure, the boys would get detention for two weeks, and a lecture on not bullying those who were different. But the principal also told Coach that he should make Junior “man up” if he wanted the harassment to stop. 

“They see the figure skating as, well, effeminate,” the principal said. “And he bakes?”

To Coach it sounded like, “Why don’t you just send him to school in a skirt?”

Coach vowed to make it clear to his players, at least, that their job wasn’t just winning football games. It was to behave like gentlemen, with girls, with boys, with everyone. He heard them laughing about it in the locker room.

“Just because his kid’s that way, we have to be nice to fags?”

By the end of the football season, he’d put in his notice and planned to start the next year in Madison, more than an hour away.

That year, Junior quit figure skating. Suzanne told Coach it wasn’t because he was worried about being bullied at the new school. It was just that it would be impossible to live at home and keep skating with Katya, and no one else in the area was close to her level. Katya herself said that to meet his potential, Junior would have to move away from home and skate for a higher profile coach somewhere else, embracing a life that had time for almost nothing but skating. Junior wanted to stay home, she said.

Instead, Junior joined the his new school’s co-ed hockey team, where his figure skating skills meant that he could literally skate rings around the other players. He had a decent shot, too, his father discovered when he went to games late in the season, after football ended. 

Junior’s baking hobby became more intense, too. It was something he might want to pursue as an adult, and he was using social media to get exposure for it, although Coach couldn’t have explained how if someone paid him,

When Junior was 18, he went away to college in Massachusetts, to a small private university called Samwell. Coach was used to dealing with recruiters for football, but none of the students he knew had ever gone there. Still, when Junior started talking about Samwell, Coach asked around.

Good school, they said. Decent hockey team, especially with the addition of former NHL star Bob Zimmerman’s son after he had some personal problems. Very LGBTQ-friendly.

“Suzanne, why does Junior want to go to Samwell?” Coach asked.

“Honestly, I think he wants to get out of Georgia,” she said. “People here haven’t always been exactly kind to him. And he can play hockey there, and they’ll give him a scholarship so we can afford it. Why? Don’t you think he should go?”

“It’s awfully far away,” Coach said. “What if he needs us?”

“Oh, Richard,” Suzanne said. “He’s ready for this. He’s grown up so much these last few years, and he needs to spread his wings.”

Junior had to get to school the second week of August, just as Coach was ramping up pre-season practices for his team. There was no way he could take the time to drive up. He clapped his son on the shoulder before he left, told him he was proud of him, told him to study hard and play hard. “Yes, sir,” Junior said.

Junior and Suzanne texted or phoned each other almost every day, it seemed like, and talked over the computer where they could see each other once a week. It was during these talks that Coach would lean into the screen and make small talk about his team, about Junior’s team, about the NFL. He learned from Suzanne that Junior was having a hard time adjusting to being checked, but he was getting help from the Zimmermann boy. Coach thought that was nice of him.

Suzanne apologized that she would miss Coach’s sectional playoff game when Samwell parents’ weekend rolled around in November. She flew to Massachusetts, saw Junior score a goal and met Bob Zimmermann, who complimented Junior after the game.

“I’m surprised you ever came home,” Coach teased, and she laughed and said, “You know I’ll always love you best.”

Coach’s season ended just after Thanksgiving, bowing out in the state quarterfinals. Junior came home for the holiday and spent most of his time baking and telling Suzanne about his teammates. It seemed like he loved hockey more now than he had when he left, and for the first time, he had the kind of close friends that Coach had always found through sports.

Maybe Samwell had been the right choice.

Then Junior got hurt, 1,000 miles away. Suzanne got the call from his coach, letting her know Junior had a concussion and would be out for the rest of the season, which turned out to be only one more game.

Coach was worried -- of course he was, he had seen concussions that had permanent effects -- but Junior told Suzanne he wanted to stay at Samwell so he could catch up on his classes as soon as possible. Junior had never been a particularly diligent student, so Coach figured that meant he wasn’t too bad.

Still, Junior’s activity was restricted his first few weeks at home, Coach watched him for lingering signs of injury -- everything from headaches to mood swings -- and while Junior seemed different, it was more a case of maybe growing into himself. Before Junior could work out again, he baked, and he was on his computer and phone almost constantly. 

Coach thought he heard the name Jack more than even over winter break. Another positive sign, Coach thought. Junior should try to make friends with the best player on the team if he wanted to get better.

No one mentioned having Coach join Suzanne and Bitty for the trip back to Samwell for his sophomore year.

This time, when Suzanne came back, she told Coach about the place Junior moved into, a ramshackle house full of hockey players. Of all the places Coach had thought Junior would end up, it had never been a de facto frat house, with his music and his baking and his decorating.

But Suzanne said the team seemed to welcome Junior and the pie he baked for a belated birthday party for Jack Zimmermann. She had cleaned and stocked the kitchen with Junior, she said, and even helped put up curtains, while she got to know Junior’s housemates. They were all bigger than Junior, she said, but they seemed to like him. They treated him like a teammate, not a mascot.

Jack Zimmermann was quiet and intense about hockey, she said. Two defensemen, one black and one white, were inseparable. One player, who went by the name “Shitty,” if you could believe that, wandered the house all the time in nothing but his boxers.

“What kind of place is this?” Coach asked. “You know they say there’re a lot of gay kids there.”

“Oh, I don’t think Mr. Crappy’s going without clothes has anything to do with sex,” Suzanne said. “I’m not sure what it’s about really, but it doesn’t seem to bother the boys.”

Coach thought about asking whether she thought Junior was gay. He’d been wondering that since at least middle school, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask your son, he thought. Junior’s best friends in high school had mostly been girls, but he’d never dated any of them, except for a few dances that he'd gone to as friends. There were some boys who came around when Junior started playing hockey, but Coach hadn’t noticed anything that looked like a dating relationship.

It wasn’t like he had never met a gay person before. He’d known a few in college, even suspected he’d coached a handful in football, although none of his players had ever come out to him. They usually seemed to want to just fly under the radar.

If Junior was gay, it would be fine with him, Coach thought. But he had to admit he would worry about him more. Still, gay or not, Junior had already been bullied for being different. It was good that he had friends behind him now.

Junior was quieter over Christmas break, tired from finals he said. He spent even more time on his phone, but he did go to a New Year’s party with kids he knew from high school. Still, he was home long before midnight. He had a game the next week, he said.

Coach watched the Frozen Four on TV, saw the way Junior skated around people, the way Zimmermann took control, the way they worked together. Maybe it wasn’t football, but it was something. He saw the slump in the team’s shoulders when they lost the final, and knew how that felt.

Suzanne told him that Zimmermann had signed with the Providence team shortly after the NCAA season ended. 

Just before the end of the school year, Suzanne told him Zimmermann would be coming to visit over the Fourth of July. That made his antennae twitch. A professional athlete just starting his career, taking time from training and other obligations to visit a now-former teammate two years behind, one who would never play professionally? 

The Junior who came home was yet a new version of himself, still glued to his phone and on the computer in his room when he wasn't baking, planning to bake or, wonder of wonders, keeping his conditioning up. He smiled more than Coach remembered, at least since he was very small, but he seemed nervous and skittish at the same time.

Junior’s summer job coaching at the local rink’s skating day camp started the second week of June, so that kept him busy, too. But for Junior, skating and taking care of people seemed to come naturally.

Finally Coach asked one night.

“So why is Jack Zimmerman coming all the way to Georgia to visit you?”

It wasn't until Junior looked down at his plate and mumbled something about being his friend that Coach realized how that probably sounded.

He tried to make it better by saying, “Maybe he just can't get enough of your pies.”

Then Junior just looked confused so Coach gave up.

When Jack arrived, fetched from the airport by Junior in the truck, Coach wasn't confused at all. Junior was practically glowing, and Jack looked at Junior the way Coach had looked at Suzanne when they were young.

He was surprised to hear Jack call Junior “Bitty” only because he'd once been called that by his own teammates. Apparently, it went with the name Bittle.

He was not surprised when Junior said he was going to take Jack on a drive around town that afternoon. 

That evening, he tried to make sure to announce himself somehow before he entered any room, and thought this would all be much easier if he didn't have to pretend he didn’t know what was going on. 

The boys (young men?) slept in Junior’s room, and Coach would have bet money that the air bed didn't get used.

The Fourth of July was busy, with the barbecue and the baking and the family. Coach watched Jack and Junior. They were careful not to touch, but never more than a few feet from each other.

That night, they went off alone to watch the fireworks.

The morning of the fifth of July, Coach decided that enough was enough. If they wouldn't say something, he would. He was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking his coffee, when the boys (he was Junior’s father; he could call them boys) came back from a run.

Junior’s eyes got wide when he saw him, like they used to when he was afraid he was in trouble. But Junior looked at Jack, then sat across from Coach. 

“Want some water?” Jack asked. 

When Junior nodded, Jack filled two glasses from the tap and came to sit next to him.

“Coach, there's something I need to tell you,” he said, a note of determination and defiance in his voice.

“OK,” Coach said, and put his hands on top of the paper.

“Coach, I'm gay,” Junior said.

“OK,” Coach responded again.

“Jack and I are together,” Junior pressed on. 

“OK,” Coach said again. “That all?”

“Um, I guess?” Junior said. 

“Well, I have to say none of that comes as a surprise,” Coach said. “But I can tell that was hard for you to say. I'm sorry for that. I’ve always loved you, and I always will, and I want you to be happy. If you're happy with Jack, then I'm happy for you.

“That's not to say I'm not worried. Not everybody will take it well, and Jack’s going to be playing in the NHL. Are you planning on coming out, son?”

“I'm already out at school,” Junior said.

“That's fine, but I was talking to Jack,” Coach said. “People are more accepting than they used to be, but not everybody is.”

“I know, sir, and I will come out eventually, but not right away,” he said. “I want to play at least one season to prove I can do it first.”

“Well, that's not going to be easy on either of you,”Coach said. “Do your parents know?”

“Yes, and they love Bitty.”

“I'm sure they do, and it's good you can look to them for support. Let me tell you this: if you ever need to get away and can take a day or two off, you and Junior are always welcome here.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Bitty said, once he could swallow around the lump in his throat. “This is about the hardest thing I ever did, and I never imagined you'd take it so calmly. Do you know where Mama is?”

“She's out in the garden weeding before it gets too hot,” Coach said. “Go ahead. Take her some water. I don't think she'll be surprised either.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought! You can find me on Tumblr at [JustLookFrightened](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/justlookfrightened)!


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